Brandon: Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. We are in season four, episode five. The Validation Your Wife Is Desperate For. Now some of you guys don't listen to the end of the episode and we give some announcements, but if you are hoping to join us in San Diego, we're hosting a two day workshop, August fourteenth and fifteenth. There are some tickets.
The link is below the show notes here. Day one, I spend with the men. We go deep. I give you tools. I give you empowerment to dive into your marriage. Day two, we facilitate together. You can gather details below. I would love to have you there.
And if you are looking for support right now in your marriage, you can apply to join our couples app, which is also in the show notes. Let's jump in.
So the validation your wife is desperate for this is so important because all of you guys are in a lot of pain. And I'm going ask Caitlyn here in a second to describe the pain of betrayal and to give some words to it. And one of the things we always say is your pain is your pain. And I think a lot of couples are like, does anybody understand like what we're going through? And the honest answer is no.
Even though as you guys listen to these podcasts, you're like, oh, they get it. They finally get me somebody who gets me. We've had people come up and tell us your story is exactly like mine. In fact, many people have said that our story is exactly like theirs. That I should be in jail.
There's, I've done everything under the scenes.
Caitlyn: It's normally nothing like the other person's story.
Brandon: But that feeling of you get me is the feeling of validation. And that is one of the most powerful things you can experience when you've been betrayed, when your whole world's been flipped upside down, is you finally feel like, wow, somebody gets me. And in betrayal, do you know that somebody that you wanted to be? If you betrayed your wife, she's desperate for you to get her. She doesn't want to have to try to like convince you to get your attention to make a big show.
She doesn't have to get a bunch of people, some people to come team up with her, can I get the counselor? Can I get this person? She wants you to get it. And I think that's, before we had our couples program, I had just my men's program and I am looking to do a men's cohort at some time. And that worked so well because most women just wanted, they wanted their husband to go be told by another man to validate her.
And I'm still telling you guys to do that. But the most powerful thing you can do is to not need somebody else to tell you to validate your wife, but for you to do it because he's desperate for it, and you have everything inside of you that you need to do it. But first, just really wanted to explore, like, what's what's painful about being betrayed.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. Yeah. Before I even say that, I wanna touch on you'll notice that we actually don't go into like extreme detail on the exact nitty gritty of what Brandon's sexual brokenness was or the exact, you know, formula of the brokenness of our story. And that is very purposeful because people try they you think that your validation comes from being exactly like somebody else. Right?
Like, if we have the same exact story, then you fully understand me.
Brandon: You get it.
Caitlyn: Brandon even says that there'll be many times I had a brother that passed away from cancer when I was in high school. And many times I run into people, meet people, and we'll be talking on the beach, we'll be talking at coffee, whatever. And they will share with me a story of a family member of theirs, a friend, whatever it may be, that has died of cancer. And you might think that that would be a really good time for me to be like, I know what you've been through because I watched my brother die from cancer. I almost never, I'm actually trying to think if I ever, I almost never will interject that story.
Why? Because that never actually leads to somebody feeling validated. So culturally, we think I need to find somebody who's been exactly through what I've been through, and then I will receive the validation, the comfort, the support that I need, right? And there are countless dozens of people who have been in my space, in my field, telling me about their significant other that has passed away from cancer. And I guarantee to you, they felt 100% seen by me, 100% validated by me, and I never even told them that I had lost my sibling from cancer.
They never even knew that.
Brandon: I've even asked him. I'm like, why don't you say something? And she's like, I'm giving them what they actually, what I wanted. Cause when Caitlyn walked through her brother dying,
Caitlyn: exactly.
Brandon: Everybody had a story. Yep. I thinking of one I can't share publicly right now. I don't think my dad dad, if you're listening to the podcast.
Caitlyn: We love you.
Brandon: We love you. My dad shared with Caitlyn at the first dinner we had.
Caitlyn: The whole family.
Brandon: The whole family. This is like a year after brother passed away and he shared that his dog had died and that that was really hard for him.
Caitlyn: No. He understand what you're going through because my dog had passed away.
Brandon: So again, dad if you're listening, I'm sorry but we had to share that.
Caitlyn: Wow. That's laughable. But that's actually what most people are trying to do when they validate.
Brandon: As a society, that's what we are find find something that remotely relates what you're going through.
Caitlyn: Exactly. And that's actually the most invalidating thing that you can do to somebody. We'll we'll talk about the keys and tools that we have for validating. But I just wanna I just wanna break that down even right now because the people, like Brandon said, who will come up to me, I laugh every time, like, under my breath, but women will come up to me and I know their story. Like, at the events, they'll come up to me and, Caitlyn, I am exactly like you, they will say.
And I'm like, to be honest, I've never been through half of the horrific things you've been through, and I applaud you. I don't say any of this. I think this. Like, I applaud you that you are brave enough to sit in this room
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: To listen to what we have to say and to go through this. And you wanna know why they feel exactly like me or exactly like Brandon or why many of you listening feel so connected is not because I tried validating your experience by trying to say mine was like yours. That's not why any of you feel connected. That's actually probably why a lot of you feel repulsed by other people online, other counselors, other pastors, is because that does not make you feel seen. It normally makes you feel like, wow, you took this and you made it about you, which is exactly what it does.
That's why I never bring my brother up because I'm not actually needing any comfort or validation from that person. But if I bring that up, I instantly need comfort and validation from that person or they feel uncomfortable. I can't say, well, my brother died too, without them feeling like it's socially like, it would be socially unacceptable for them to pause and then go, oh, I'm so sorry. I just stole the whole conversation. I stole the whole show.
I made that all about me as a guise to comfort and make it about them.
Brandon: Which I think is why so many men when their wife is saying, you betrayed me, I'm hurt. They go, well, I have nothing to relate to. I've never I I wasn't the one that was betrayed, so I have no idea what to give you. Like, I got nothing to pull from. True.
I've been hurt before, like, oh, then they try to make my life was hard. You're right. My and it's like, nothing's this is falling on flat ears. And I think about this, like, if if you need somebody to have an affair to help you through your affair
Caitlyn: Yep.
Brandon: Then we we're having a lot of affairs. Yep. Instead, what if it was validation is being understood? Exactly. What I wrote down.
Is that what you wrote down? See, look at that, we're on the same page. And that's why you're here. That's why you're listening to this, is because we're willing to understand or put words or validate your experience. Again, we're not here to save you, but we're here to say what you're going through matters.
It deserves a voice. It deserves validation. It deserves healing. And anybody can get behind that.
Caitlyn: Yeah, it's also not, because you'll hear us say, Don't take advice from people that don't have what you want. Which I think a lot of people flip and go, Well, don't take advice from people who haven't had the same story as you. It's like, No, no, no, you guys feel understood when you listen to us, because at the root level what we're talking about, it pierces through like the addiction is the surface level. That is the surface level issue. I don't care.
That's what Brandon realized when he was in his men's community because I don't care if you slept with 13 people or you slept with one person. I mean, like, I'm using I don't care loosely, but like, it doesn't matter as far as you feeling understood. It doesn't matter if you slept with 13 people and you had a ten year porn addiction. It doesn't matter what the surface level addiction was
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: What that was because underneath the root system, the reason that led you there and how you got there is going to look exactly the same. There was a guy in Brandon's men's men's community who had had, like, an absurd amount of hand jobs from men. He wasn't even actually he like, he was married to a woman. He didn't
Brandon: This was when I was this was before I started my own program, one that I participated.
Caitlyn: Community that Brandon started. This is the one he was a part of in 2019.
Brandon: Not that it really matters.
Caitlyn: No. You're welcome in this space. But this man was a married man to a woman. He just believed that the hand jobs and blow jobs were better from other men. So he had been hiding these years of addiction to his wife.
And of course Brandon, you know, had some initial judgments of like, well, your addiction is way worse than mine. Different. Way different than mine. And we could never understand or validate each other because look at our different stories, right? And then the more they started talking, Brandon's whole bubble was bursted and he goes, woah, at the root Mhmm.
We have so much in common. Right? Yeah. And so when we boil it down and we get to the roots, that's what you guys see in our conversation. It's not like me saying, well, Brandon did this, this, this, and this.
So now whoever has the same story, come on into our sphere. It's like, no, no, no. Let me talk about the roots of what's going on here. Yeah. What it created, what we're moving towards, what we are creating on the other side.
And that's when people go, woah, I can connect to that. I feel seen by that. We're cutting through, we're getting to the core, and then we're also moving into what it is that we actually wanna create.
Brandon: So good. So when we dive into those topics, and you guys feel it's it's it feels validating for somebody to put words to something you've been wrestling with or have a lot of confusion in. And so that's what we're trying to do is give words to your pain and give words to what the healing can look like. And for those of you that resonates with, we're honored, to get to walk with you. What I wanted to dive into now was the pain that comes with betrayal.
I think for a lot of women, they've been betrayed. And what I've heard and what I've seen is there's a lot of confusion initially. It brings about a whirlwind of unknowns that hit you like a ton of bricks. It blindsides you. You're like, so did you ever love me?
Is there more to this? It completely blows up your sense of reality, your sense of well-being, your sense of safety. And the hard part is the person that has the knowledge that would allow you to answer some of your questions is not very open. We're going talk about some of the things that is not validating, but the person that wounded you is not a reliable source to tell you what you're actually going through. You just know, like you caught them or they gave you a little bit of detail and now you're like, well, now my whole life doesn't make sense or add up.
And the person I need to hear from to find out almost hates me or is against me or is offended when I want to know the details. And now there's, there's insecurity, there's pain, there's loneliness, there's anger. That probably just scratched the surface to what some of you have been through, but I wanted Caitlyn to speak to what, what, what you see in that.
Caitlyn: Yeah. Think you really hit it home. I think some of the biggest pains I remember feeling was that my whole life was a lie. My whole life with you was a lie. Right?
And I've heard that from a lot of women. It's like, woah, you wake up and realize it's kinda like you feel like you were in some sort of a horror film. It's like, oh, none of this was real. Like, the moments like, I remember so many times where it's like and I would think about an anniversary that we had had when we'd have a special dinner, and we went on a special trip, especially before kids. And then I find out the things that happened on those exact days or on those exact trips, and it's like, woah, like, that time imprinted for me is special, but now it's ruined.
Like it it's like, woah, that wasn't actually special. I lived a lie. I lived in a different reality that wasn't real. Right? When really you were living in the reality that wasn't real, but it's almost like I get brought into the vortex of the unreal reality that you had created, right?
And then the deeper wounding and pain comes when you're like, wow, my life feels like a lie. And then you look at the person like you're saying, you look at the person who did that to you and you go like, oh, like we said on the last episode, you are my wounder. So now you're gonna be my healer, right? And you look at you and you go, oh, you're numb. You're gone.
Yeah. You're not here. Like, you guys have heard the story of the night where the cup was thrown at the wall and we're sitting in this this side room, our kids are asleep, and this is just in the wake of everything. I don't even think I knew the full truth yet. And we're having these hard conversations and we're sitting in there and Brandon just discloses something new.
I I probably pulled it out of him honestly, which that is deep deep pain of betrayal which I felt and I know many of you feel is when you start the journey, you still feel like you're initiating everything and pulling everything out of them. And you're like, come on, you've lied to me and betrayed me for this many years and I still have to pull the truth out from your teeth. And so many women including myself were like, I'm sitting here saying, I'll stay with you. All I want is the truth. And you look at them, and they're still numb, and they're still hiding, and they're still lying, which here on the other side, I can tell you why they're doing that.
It doesn't make the pain any less though.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: It doesn't make it any less excruciating. So I'm looking at Brandon as I'm pulling more truth out of him as he's saying, there's nothing else, there's nothing else. And then I ask questions in a certain way and angle them at it from a different take and okay, now we find out more truth, right? And I'm looking at him, I'm weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping. And I'm looking at him and he's like a deer in the headlights.
No emotions. Numb. Gone. Hollow. Like that's how Brandon would even describe himself.
And I'm just like, why can't you get this? I take my cup, I don't throw it at him. I throw it at the wall, right? It's a glass cup that had water in it. I throw the glass cup at the wall, it hits the corner of the wall, like you know, where the two walls meet.
The glass cup bounces off and a piece of the wall chips and I'm like, woah, like it hit me like
Brandon: And the glass didn't break.
Caitlyn: The glass did not even chip, didn't even break, it still was a completely usable glass and I I realized like, woah, your walls are so fortified. They need to break. The walls of denial, the walls protecting you need to break for us to actually get break through. Right? Which again, it doesn't take the pain away.
The pain is that you are signing up for a journey for your spouse to thaw out. And people say, I did a coaching call on this actually inside of our community. A lot of men will say, okay, well, shouldn't I, before I get honest, before I come clean, shouldn't I first do embodiment? Shouldn't I get into my body? Shouldn't I thought my emotions?
Shouldn't I understand myself? Because I always say you cannot validate your spouse if you first do not understand what you're feeling and how to handle that, what to do with it, right? Well, there's this tension, there's this catch 22, right? Because when you come clean or when you get caught, you're numb because you just lived a life of addiction. But yet you can start embodiment right then and there, but you're not necessarily embodied right then and there.
So then of course that brings up the great argument of, well shouldn't we do a whole embodiment thing and get to understand our emotions? And of course that sounds great at first, but let me break it down to you, it's actually really simple why that won't work. You can't become embodied and have a bag of secrets. You will always remain numb, desensitized, and dissociating. Yep.
So you might say, well, first I'll do thirty days of embodiment and breaking down my emotions like I know what my secrets are. No, you don't. You're still living in denial. And to carry around a bag of secrets, you can't be fully embodied because you created two of you. You've created this reality of you over here that lives in addiction and this reality of you over here that pretends to play married and live a life as a a father, as a dad, as a business owner, whatever you are.
Right? You So have your two realities. You have to actually merge them, bring all of it together, decide what you're getting rid of, what you're healing, what you're stepping into to become an embodied person. So you actually this is the part of taking ownership responsibility like we talked about in the last episode, realizing I'm 100% responsible and 100% capable. So you look at your mess and go, okay, wow, yeah, this is hard, and I'm 100% capable of cleaning up this mess.
It's not like, oh, baby, can I have thirty day free pass of not telling you the truth so I can go learn how to tap into my emotions? No, you can't. You can't tap into your emotions if you have hiddenness and secrecy. Like, you have to buckle up and go, woah, I'm doing this all right now, all at the same time.
Brandon: And with that, I think because betrayal is so messy, the people around you in this time, they don't know really what's going on. And so what I did is I tried to bring as many people as possible in for consulting advice. That was counselors. That was friends. Sometimes I brought in single guy friends, friends, lots lots of pastors, lots of mentors.
Was like, Hey guys, here we're going through. They asked some questions. I give just enough information so that I could get told what I wanted. And so for the betrayed spouse is often the most misunderstood person in the equation because often the person in the double life, the addict knows really well how to can be convincing to others, how to minimize their behavior, how to get the approval of others. So I was great at saying, you know, like, guys, I I'm.
Had looked at some stuff on social media and I told Caitlyn about it and she's really hurting, but I'm, I'm committed to doing the work. So I was like, Brandon seems like he's really going after this. He really cares. It sounds like Caitlyn's really hurt. Why is she so hurt?
Why is she so upset? And that's honestly the approach that most betrayed women get is like at the counseling office, at the church office, at the friend's house. It's like, don't fully understand why she's hurting so much. And she might you might not even have the words because you're pretty exhausted to build a case for why you're in so much pain. You know, who'd be the best person to do that?
The person that wounded you would be able say, here's why my wife's in so much pain. Instead, if you're not taking ownership, the initial wave is making your wife sound crazy. And Caitlyn actually found after I'd started going to this counselor that I had written out some, just like my raw thoughts. And it was about me saying like, Caitlyn's kind of crazy and overcon like overreacting about this. I ripped it up and threw it away, but she put it back together and read it.
Like in the wake of me betraying Caitlyn needing to validate her, I'm actually, think she's crazy. I think she's overreacting. The betrayed spouse is being misunderstood by other people. They're meant to be there to help. You're portraying them in a way that makes them feel crazy.
And like what they're feeling is over the top. And that's all a strategy. And sometimes it's subconscious. Sometimes it's outright intentional. My intention was not actually to make Caitlyn look crazy to others.
It was literally that I don't know what to do. And then the only thing I knew up to that point was just to confess little bits of me to appear like I was trying, and poll take from everybody said, like, do you think I should do? Nobody knew what to tell me because they didn't have the full story. Only I had the full story. Only Caitlyn had the full story.
So ultimately, nobody will have the full story but the two of you. That's why stepping out of denial step one, leave the trap of denial. You have to say, well, what's real? Unless you're willing to you can't sit with somebody for ten hours and say, here's what's real. You know what's real, and she knows what's real.
Stop making her sound crazy and feel crazy and be willing to sit in what's real. One of Caitlyn's best friends at the time, she wasn't married. And when Caitlyn was in severe, severe emotional pain, she made herself available to be with Caitlyn. And what that looked like? Well, she didn't offer advice.
Caitlyn: Nothing.
Brandon: She didn't even tell her to just leave me. Nope. She actually just asked questions, listened to what Caitlyn had to say, gave her some hugs, brought food to our house at times, and she championed us. And she didn't pretend that she even knew the full story. She just said, I'm here for you, friend.
Like, what do you need? What's going on? There was no attacks against her or me. It was literally just tell me what's going on. And that approach, which we'll get through, get to later is more validating than giving bad advice than blaming or attacking one spouse or the other, but actually just being curious about what's going on.
I'll give you the golden ticket. If you want to give your wife the validation she's desperate for, get curious about what's going on inside of her. Be willing to slow down and sit with her and hold her and ask and keep asking and keep seeking to understand what she is going through. That is validation. Not trying to make the pain go away, not trying to erase it, not trying to alter the story to what feels right and easy.
What is she actually going through and why? That is the validation she's desperate for.
Caitlyn: And that friend specifically, actually, we talk about in other episodes, we, we began to limit the voices that we sought counsel from. Brandon, actually, I had this moment where I was like, oh my gosh, like, you're talking to, like, 30 people about this, and you're only giving them snippets of the story, which was actually a complete strategy, subconscious one, to be able to essentially gang up a whole amount of people against me.
Brandon: For many Which is I mean, that's so cruel and humiliating.
Caitlyn: And for many of you, that's sadly very common. Your your spouse goes to the counselor, the pastors, the mentors, the friends, and shares only a really small part of the story. Like Brandon said, I always say that people in Addict are master storytellers. So you've become a really good storyteller. You first started telling stories to yourself and to others, and you're probably really, really good at it.
And so you have a whole story in your head that's made up, and now you get the option to come back to reality and to see what's really true. No more stories anymore, right? So we started limiting all the voices. We found the exact people who had good fruit on their tree and who were supportive of our vision, right? And so you might say, well, said, I thought you said don't take counsel from people who, you know, aren't in the same seat, like aren't don't have created what you what you want, right?
Because this was a single friend. I didn't take any counsel from her. This is all about actual actual empathy, right? Which is true validation. She sat there with me most of the time silent.
Most of the time, I'm crying, and she's making me meals. I had kids at the time. I remember many times I was about to get on an airplane and take the two girls. They were very little at the time. I just needed a break.
I went to my family's house in Oregon for a week. Brandon was supposed to be doing some radical healing. Of course, he just had his best friend over for sleepovers and read one book. So I'm getting on an airplane. My friend decides, okay, I'm gonna bring her a meal so she can take that onto the airplane with her kids.
Right? So it says she was a empathetic role in my life. She wasn't sitting there like, oh, I have no idea what to say because I'm not married. But she also wasn't like, here's what I've read in books or what I've heard from other people or here's advice I could conjure up even though I've never been in your situation. No.
No. No. Like I said, like wrapping this back all the way even to the beginning, I'm sitting with people who are telling me about they've lost, you know, loved ones of cancer, I'm just sitting and listening. I'm reflecting. I'm being an empathetic voice in their life.
Right? I'm I'm I'm actually mainly just being an empathetic person, holding the space for that. And that's exactly what this friend was to me. There was even another pastor friend of mine who I was having a very, very hard night. I was crying and been crying for hours, and this is probably one of our breaking points.
And she said, I'll come over and say nothing and just cry with you on the floor. And that's exactly what she did. She came over for an hour and a half and laid next to me on the floor and cried. She said nothing to me, she held me, she cried with me, and then she left. We exchanged no words, and that was more Both of these examples were way more validating than the times I sat in counselor's office offices to be told that I'm controlling and codependent.
Why, guys? We already said this in a different episode. Why was I controlling and codependent? Because I wanted radical, full, honest truth in my marriage, and I believed that all sexual brokenness could be rewired. So now I am controlling and codependent, and there are many of you women in the same boat.
That's why betrayal is even painful is because you do feel crazy. You do feel crazy in the wake of betrayal because like I said, your whole reality feels like a lie. Of course you feel crazy. So then when your spouse looks at you and goes, wow, you are crazy, and then pins up everyone against you to go, yeah, don't you see she's crazy? It's like, of course you feel a little crazy right now.
Your whole world just got blown up by a grenade. You can't see clearly. You're dizzy. You're disoriented. You're wounded.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: You don't really know which way is right from left. You don't really know where to go. Everyone has a different opinion and they're calling that empathy and they're calling it validation, but actually it's just shoving their own advice and opinions down your throat. You're like, wow, this is excruciatingly painful because you feel blind. Yeah.
You don't know where to go, right? And every single voice almost seems to make you feel more crazy. That's why we're gonna talk about how your your spouse, the one who's betrayed you, becomes the empathetic space, becomes the validation. But that's why we believe so much in limiting the voices down to either one, two, none, whatever it needs to be. It's not your whole small group.
It's not your whole church. It's not your whole family text group. It's finding the people who can hold space for you. Not giving you advice, not telling you that your spouse is trash, not telling you what to do or not to do. Sitting it with you when you're crying, sitting with you and giving you a meal and just listening to what you have to say, listening to your heart.
That's what empathy is, you guys.
Brandon: It's somebody who's unsurprised by what you're sharing and fully in agreement with the healing that you wanna pursue. They might be surprised by what they're hearing, but they're not, they're not reactively giving bad advice. They're not just trying to get you out of this. They're helping you be in this and they're being in it with you. And that's a really powerful place to be.
I wanted to talk about what is not, not validating in this, in this scenario. That's, there's many things once I can read my handwriting saying, sorry, doesn't do anything. So when, when Caitlyn's showing that she's hurting, I can say I'm sorry all I want, but like she said, I was numb. So saying, I'm sorry for doing that. I'm sorry that happened.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's falling on deaf ears because it's sorry for what? Well, for what I did. Do you understand?
No, I'm just sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. You're right. It was bad. Agreeing.
I'm sorry. It does nothing. And then often we, we're going to talk to you about how to validate from the heart, but just repeating is different than reflecting and sitting with what your wife is saying. You could say like, I hear you're saying this hurts. And you can sound like a robot and you can use whatever scripts you find online for how to, however AI gave you for how to validate your wife.
And you will sound just like AI, a smart computer that is not connecting, that is not emotional. And I think the biggest thing that you can address right off the bat that does not sound validating or feel validating is when she brings the pain to you, which is in the wake of betrayal. It's going to come early often and always, you know, hot and heavy. It's not going to come when you expect it. You're going to be making notes and be like, I can't believe you.
And then you're going to be like, well, crap. I wasn't ready for this. So you take a deep breath because your initial response would be, I'm going defend myself. Cause she's talking about the thing that I've been hiding for so many years, but if you haven't been, if you're not hiding anything else, you can move from defending to validation. But if she says like, what you did hurt so bad and all this, and you go, well, and you defend and you say you got the details wrong and you try to start shifting all these things about it, which then moves into minimizing, well, guys do this or it wasn't this.
Everybody does this. You might start minimizing hurt, being general about what you did. You might even start justifying it. I had so many thoughts of justification. Well, you said some really hurtful things.
And I went to that because you weren't being nice and. This is common. This is what all men struggle with. So they, why are you being so hard on me? Why are you so hurt if this is what other men do?
And so you might feel like I'll play the victim and be like, well, you know, I've tried. I've already read the books. Like, I already I already prayed and God didn't take it from me. There must just be something. This is what men struggle with.
Like, why are you so upset about it? None of that validates your wife's pain. And none of that makes you a more powerful man to heal his marriage. So defending, minimizing, justifying, generalizing, insert ing word doesn't do anything. And Caitlyn maybe could speak to this silence in the face of your wife's pain is not an option when your wife shares that she's hurting.
And there's a, there's a difference between receiving what she's saying and not just blurting out words, but sitting like a brick wall that has no emotion. That has no words, no response other than man. That's what I gave Caitlyn. And that's not an option at this point. That doesn't help heal.
That doesn't validate anything. So the VA the embodiment work is what allows you to not be silent to your wife's pain. And that's when you start doing some breath work, cold exposure, shaking out your body, like actually taking time to get into your emotions so that when she's bringing her pain, you actually can like, woah, like I'm alive. Like I'm sitting in this. And then you bring what aliveness you have to help mend the pain that she's experiencing.
Caitlyn: And when Brandon started realizing like, oh, silence is not an option. Like, I actually need to show up to be the healer here, is when he started realizing, oh, cause remember I already talked about the catch 22 here is that you are numb when you start disclosing these realities. So you're not just gonna instantly be embodied, yet you're 100% powerful so you can 100% get back into your body and it doesn't have to forever. So Brandon oftentimes would we would be having a hard conversation. There would be a lot of emotions expressed.
Maybe I'd have questions. Maybe maybe I'm just weeping. Maybe whatever. And he would say, I can't feel right now, and I want to. So I'm gonna go take a cold shower.
I'm gonna go sit out in the snow, and I'm gonna journal. I'm gonna go for a run, and I'm gonna be back. I'm gonna go outside, and I'm gonna shake it out. I'm gonna go and call somebody from my men's community for fifteen minutes. I'm not gonna complain.
Like, it's not like to go call and complain. It's not even to go seek advice. Yeah. It's just say, wanna Yeah. Get Here's how I'm gonna show up.
And they're gonna go, Yeah, you can. You're totally capable of doing this, right? It's like sometimes there'd be three minute conversations. It's just a little like, I can do this. That's right.
Yeah, you can dude, go do it, you know? And so he's like, it's not, oh, it's not going silent, it's not correcting facts, it's not minimizing, it's not deflecting, it's not blaming, it's none of that. Those are all just coping mechanisms for the fact that you realize you probably do wanna actually show up, but you don't feel capable. And so instead of just taking the higher road, you're just like, oh, I'll just throw a punch here, and then I'll get her to blow up more, or be quiet, or I'll just walk out of the room, whatever. It's like, no, no, no.
Instead of doing those low tactics, instead of going into your old ways, right, you're gonna show up and create a new pattern. You're gonna create a new way in your marriage, and you're gonna say, I can't feel right now. You're gonna be honest. I can't feel anything. Like, you're crying and you're weeping, rightfully so, but I can't feel anything.
So I'm going to go and do a five minute cold shower and then I'm going to come back and we're going to try this again.
Brandon: Yeah. I can't feel anything and I do nothing about it. Is it is an option? It's like, I think a lot of men they've said like, just sit there and take it. Yep.
I let her berate me for hours. I let her just loop, loop, loop, loop, loop.
Caitlyn: She's only looping cause you're not actually listening.
Brandon: You're not listening, but you're not receiving her. So sitting there and take it is not validation. It's not noble to sit there and take it. If Caitlyn,
Caitlyn: that's also not a skill. It's not like skillful.
Brandon: Yeah. I turn my ears off and I just look at her. It's a blank stare and she just loops and loops and screams and yells. And we wrap up and we don't talk to each other for a couple of days. That's not validation.
When she goes into her spiral, which she will, she will spiral out of control. She will feel re and she should and she should. You'd got in a car accident because of your addiction and she wasn't driving. You were, and now she's having to heal from something she didn't choose. She's not too happy about it.
The sit there and take it approach doesn't work. And one of the things that surprised me was I actually was really angry and bitter at Caitlyn. A lot of my behaviors were justified because I didn't think that she, should share that she had regretted marrying me at times because of the way I treated her. Thought that that was completely out of line and unreasonable. And I felt a lot of bitterness that she wasn't more appreciative for all that had sacrificed and done.
Some, some people call this the nice guy syndrome. Like I had been so nice. I had let, had sacrificed so much. Why isn't that enough for you? And so as I started like becoming aware of how I felt, once I started feeling again, I'm like, I feel angry.
Like I'm angry. And that's not, that wasn't my opportunity to start like yelling at her or doing anything like that. Was just like, it was this internal awareness I had very early on. Like, I don't like you to be able to live in the same house as you and be completely separated from you and to, to live a double life. I actually had to tell myself this woman is my enemy and I've made short form reels where people are like, wow, was really intense.
But I've said like, I hated my wife for the first five years of our marriage. And that's the internal lens I saw Caitlyn through is I don't like this woman. She causes me pain. She, she causes, she doesn't, she doesn't appreciate me. That was so that I could live my double life, but that's what I felt towards Caitlyn was bitterness, anger, rage, and now she's sharing her pain and I'm, I'm like trying to open up.
I'm like, woah, like I'm actually, like, I hate you. Like, don't want, I don't want to be around you. And I just faced that and just looked at it. Was like, why? Why do I feel this way?
And it's like, oh, because she reveals my pain. Cause she reveals the ways that I'm pulling away. I'm not showing up that I'm being dishonest. She revealed my dishonesty. And that made me feel really threatened, really attacked.
And again, that's why for those of you that just keep listening and don't do anything after listening to these episodes, please go take a cold shower and see how you like, if your wife's like upset, go take a cold shower and then come back and talk with her and just notice like, oh, wait a second. I'm alert. I'm alive. I have energy in my system. That's what we're talking about.
It's a decision to not just sit there and be numb, but to do some mindfulness, to learn some emotional skills, to begin to thaw out your emotions so that when she has something that she's feeling and bringing to you, there's something that can meet her where she is.
Caitlyn: Yeah. Because Brandon would leave the conversation, go do one of these tools. Again, this wasn't taught to us. He's just like, okay, I can't feel anything. I can't even really hear you.
I'm going to go do this. And then he comes back and he's like, okay, I'm ready to show up. And I'm talking about a numb man. A man who had started numbing himself long before he had even met me, right? You had these coping mechanisms, most of you, the same story from early childhood, right?
Brandon: I need to interrupt because I can tell that I can hear people's thoughts. This is not you saying I'm going to go away for the weekend. Nope. This is ten, fifteen minutes. Oh yeah.
Like, so like I know that people are like, babe, did you hear them? They said I need to go some time to myself to No, get no, like go take a cold shower and walk back in the room.
Caitlyn: That's such a good topic. How many times did I go to the counselor? Oh, I don't even think we've shared this. This is so good. This is fresh new story.
Brandon: I don't even know where it's going. Let's go.
Caitlyn: And every counselor and pastor would just hit this roadblock because I I would lay it out so clear. Like, what's going on? This is clear. What you know? And they would just get to this stump where they're like, this roadblock where they're like, I don't even know what else to offer you guys.
We confused a lot of people because Brandon was a masterful storyteller. Brandon looked so good on paper, you guys. He was like the rising Christian leader. He'd just taken this position as the children's pastor at this church that was blooming and incredible. We were like, we were revival group leaders, we were on the prayer team, we were just we were climbing that spiritual ladder and we were collecting all our gold stars and we were doing all the good things, right?
And we're looking really really good while we were doing it. People came to us for marriage advice before we hit our marriage crumble. We were gonna start this whole ministry that it was mainly gonna be on parenting, but literally that thing was gonna crash and burn because we were crashing and burning.
Brandon: We also had started one on the covenant conversations
Caitlyn: Oh my gosh.
Brandon: Which I used to look at raunchy content through social media.
Caitlyn: Oh my gosh. I forgot about that. Brandon started a a set because this is this is a part of our blueprint while we're here to create in the world, but it was just not the right timing. Brandon started covenant conversations. You guys, I think you can still find it and it's gonna get too many facts.
Brandon: We're gonna go delete that.
Caitlyn: We're gonna go delete that right now, but it was literally about essentially creating sexual wholeness because you're like, woah, why would he start that? You guys, this is the exact example of being a masterful storyteller because he had told himself because of all that he had been taught, especially in the religious realm, he had told himself that he was living to the highest standard of sexual wholeness because he wasn't looking at pornography at this time. He wasn't masturbating. He wasn't sleeping with other women. Don't mind the fact that he's objectifying women left and right when he goes outside.
He's looking at inappropriate content on social media. Don't mind any of these other aspects, his mind, the things that he's thinking about when we're intimate together, don't mind any of that. The church tells you that's all okay. Right? So this is the story he had told himself is I'm still capable of creating this whole separate ministry and that's why denial is so messy.
That's why the walls have to come down first. But back to my original story, we're going to these counselors and and we just hit this roadblock because we confuse people because we look so good, and they would just say, okay, so I think all that I could recommend is that you guys separate for a little bit. And I'm actually not really for separating as like a healing avenue in the marriage. I'm not really for like the man going to the cabin in the wilderness and doing this work. It's like, that's so freaking easy.
Of course, you'll get I used to even say that to them. I'd be like, okay. So let me break this down for you. You want me to get separated. We have two kids at this time.
There are a toddler and a baby. Wakes up at night and I nurse them at night.
Brandon: Multiple times.
Caitlyn: Multiple times. So you want me to give my husband essentially a break. He has been lying and hiding and acting out an addiction our whole marriage and I'm just finding out about this. So I should take full responsibility for the children. I can't leave them with him.
They nurse, Right? Okay. So I'm taking the children full on, and he's gonna go have his little men's powwow in the cabin time to quote heal himself and find himself and rediscover himself and have this time, and that's gonna therefore bring us healing. It's like, no, no, no. That's just a that's just like that's vacation time.
That's not and remember, I even told you at the beginning of this, I, for a week, not because I was separating, not because I thought it was gonna be good for a marriage, I just literally was fed up and I needed a break. I took my kids. I went to Oregon where I had support and help. And Brandon, what did he do at that time? Absolutely nothing.
What do men do when they're in the wake of the healing, when they're just by themselves? They're not doing anything. Because to heal, you have to look at your spouse in the face, and you have to confess the truth and you have to rewire your brain and you have to have hard conversations. Getting separated, if you need to get separated because you need a break and you can't stand it anymore, like I have no shame or judgment, but getting separated as a tactic of healing, like I don't understand why counselors are suggestion. If there's like violence, there's stuff going on, understood.
But it's really become just this normal protocol of like, oh wow, this is really messy and hard for you guys. You should just get separated. And it's like, since when does getting separated cause any sort of connection? Separation is the opposite of connection.
Brandon: I think they call it a therapeutic separation. Again, we're not we're not logging on you counselors because I know you're listening to us. I know that this is this protocol. Everything is protocol because it's it's meant to keep people from act like, from physical abuse and from domestic violence. Like I, I get it.
Like I get it, but we're talking, we're talking about if you are stable enough to engage the pain, separation will just prolong you getting to come back. So check it out, check it out, check it out. Instead of make it, leaving all the responsibility for your wife or having to get another rent, like renting a place somewhere. What if the, the person who caused the pain, what if you just woke up? We'll just say it takes an hour from five to six in the morning.
You did some embodiment work. You engaged the healing material you're working on. You journaled an hour. Let's just say your wife wants to go to bed early. She doesn't actually want she's she's you guys talk for a little bit and then she checks out.
She's ready to go to bed. She's exhausted. And from eight to nine at night, you spend another hour. Wow. You got two hours working on yourself.
That's probably more than what you had done in the cabin. And you're probably still taking care of your responsibilities, like working everything else. And that's what we tell people is healing doesn't take place on the mountain top. Nope. It takes place in the day to day.
And that's really good news because if you can't afford to go somewhere and get help from the special people that have the special solution, or you can't afford to go live in the wilderness for two months without any normal life happening, you're a perfect candidate to heal. Because the person that needs to heal is your spouse with you. The person that's going to help you see your pain, the pain that you've caused is your spouse. So you have to actually get comfortable engaging the setting and the environment you're in and changing it from the inside out. You have to be able to change who you are at your core and how you're approaching the pain to begin with.
And so we'll give you guys our most practical way that we've, that we've heard this given. And I think it's, it's really practical. It can become robotic if you don't do it the right way, but it gave me a framework to work with to know what would help support what Caitlyn's sharing. And again, if you do this as a robot, whether to share it, it won't work. If you just repeat it, it won't work, but it's called, we call it the validation flow.
And we've heard many different variations of this, but the first thing you do is you communicate that you're going to listen. I'm here to listen. So what that looks like is not defending, getting, not minimizing, not, not anything like that. You say your wife brings some pain. You say, I want to hear what like, yeah, like tell me what's going on.
So you would, you would tell him verbally. I want to hear what you have to share. So verbal. I'm listening. Body language says I'm listening.
You aren't laid back on the couch. Passive, numb and dumb. Even if she catches you off guard, meaning she brings something big to you, you know what you're like. If I move my body, that means I'm communicating that I care. Yes.
Move your body. So you move your body. You sit up. Tell me, tell me what I wanted to hear what you're sharing, what you're saying. So you listen.
The second thing is you're going to reflect back what, what emotions she was sharing that she felt that she's bringing to you. Like, well, sometimes it's hard to get the emotions ask. Can say, well, what, what were you feeling from that? I'm hearing this. What I also like doing is in the reflecting back, what you heard her sharing, you're not repeating word for word what she said.
You're not, you're not trying to pass a quiz. You're trying to make sure you understood what she felt. So she didn't share the feelings. You tried to use in you. She's like, were just an asshole.
You're disgusting pervert. You don't go. I heard you said that I was an asshole and a disgusting pervert. You could say something like this. If she said, you're such an asshole, such a pervert.
You could say, I'm hearing that it was probably really shocking to find out the type of man that you were married to that did such horrendous things behind your back. And then she goes, yeah, that's exactly it. And then you say, what else are you feeling and processing? So you listen, you reflect back and you even use, you can clean up the words, intelligence, and use then you ask what else? What else would you add to that?
And she's going to have more. So then you reflect back what you heard from that and you ask what else? That might be a ten minute conversation. It could be an hour, but if you just continue to do that, you tell her, I want to listen to what's going on. I want to reflect what I'm hearing is your experience.
I want to know more about it. I want to understand. I'm curious. The validation your wife is desperate for. I've already said it.
It's that you have a genuine curiosity about her lived experience. And the easiest way to do that is to make it about her. Instead of being like, I need to defend. I need to prove myself. That's only somebody who's still hiding.
If you have nothing else you're hiding, then let's finally shift the focus off of you and give her the attention, the love and the nurture she needs, which looks like sitting in her pain. I think a lot of women say like, I want him to feel what I feel. You don't actually want your husband to feel what you feel. You want him to feel compassion and desire for the woman he wounded. So it's almost like I want to feel connected to this moment, which is my wife is sharing the pain of the betrayal.
How does that impact me as a man that's alive and conscious? Oh, and then I bring that to her. It's not, oh yeah, I feel confused about my identity and I feel insecure. It's hard to conjure up that feeling, but what you can do is generate the feeling of I'm going to check into this moment. I want to understand.
I want to lean towards her. I want to, yes, wow, this is big. Like my reality is I wounded my wife. I want to help her heal. I want to understand.
I want to know her in her pain. That's what scratches the surface of Validation.
Caitlyn: You're not doing what Brandon's describing so that you get a gold star. Remember, we've talked about this a lot. This isn't approval seeking behavior. You're not like, okay, see babe, I validated you once. Like, don't you feel validated?
Remember, that comes back to the convincing. You only convince something of somebody that's not obvious. So it's not like, oh see, I understood you this one time, so maybe next time you don't really need to cry, or maybe next time you don't really need to bring up the same exact thing. Like there's even some some content we had seen recently that is kind of almost alluding to the betrayed spouse needing to change the way they're speaking about the the spouse that acted out in betrayal. Like, you know, kinda like the whole classic of, you know, the wife wants you to be a king, but doesn't talk to you like you're a king.
Right? And it's like, okay, yeah, if you've slept with somebody else, you ain't acting like a king. So I ain't gonna talk to you like you're a king, and you don't need to wait for me to talk to you like king to show up as a king. Once you show up as a king, I'll talk to you as a king. Know, we can flip it the other way.
Is it my responsibility as the betrayed wounded spouse to change the way that I'm talking to you when you have been the one who's offended our union, our I can't get behind that. If you would have interviewed Brandon in 2017, 2018, he would have loved to get behind that message. Any man getting behind that message to me is a man who hasn't decided to full responsibility to clean up his own life and to clean up his own mess, which again, I'm not condoning women not talking to their to their husbands powerfully, not talking to them in a loving way. Again, I also know what it feels like to be a wounded spouse, and I know what women are going through when you are disoriented because your spouse just dropped a grenade in the living room, you can't see, you don't understand, like, you're gonna need to cry. Yeah.
And you're gonna need to cry over and over again. So having this validation conflict or converse not conflict, opposite of conflict, this conversation is not a one time thing. It's not like, well, sweetie, I checked the boxes. Give me a gold star. Now I'm a validating spouse.
Can't you tell?
Brandon: She can bring up the topic as And you should bring it up too. Don't don't make don't make her bring it up. Like, it's not a one and done thing, it's a one and always thing.
Caitlyn: Yep, you're not getting offended when the conversation gets brought up. You're actually, instead of being offended, you're actually seeing it as an opportunity. There go. This is another opportunity to heal, because if my spouse is still bringing it up, that means they don't feel healed from this, right? So you might say, Oh, Caitlyn, do you still bring up all these things?
No. Never. We never have conversations that are like, I'm still really wounded from what you did. No. Why?
Do you think I would still have those conversations if Brandon wouldn't have shown up to be the healer of the wounds he had caused? We would still most definitely be having those conversations and we wouldn't be having this podcast conversation. Because if you don't heal the wound, what happens? The wound doesn't heal you guys. So if you shut down every opportunity to heal the wounds, then the wounds don't get healed.
If you see every conversation, every tear, every time your spouse, the betrayed wounded spouse, is displaying emotions and needing comfort and validation and empathy Yeah. As an opportunity to heal, you will heal. And it's not about speeding it up. It's not about rushing it. It's not about putting it on a timeline.
It's about seeing it as an opportunity. This isn't a time to get offended. This isn't a time to try to seek validation, get a gold star. This is just a part of the process of healing together.
Brandon: Your wife is not as scary as you think. And the pain is actually not going to kill you. The avoidance of it will. Most painful thing was when she found out about the addiction or the affair. The second most painful thing and often more painful is your unwillingness to face it.
So give her the gift of being willing to face it. There's still going to be pain involved. There's still going be a lot of heartfelt conversations. You get comfortable in your own body to be able to bring that the safety you create, you know, like my wife's not a threat to me. She's hurting.
And I'm going to sit there with her and be, be with her in that. You're not offended by any of the name calling. You're not offended by any of the accusations or the questions because you're like, of course that's there. Cause I wounded her. And guess what?
From last episode, I'm the man that will help her heal. And that's what validation is all about. That's what she's desperate for.
Caitlyn: And this is actually exactly why men can be the validating empathetic voice and embodiment in their relationship, like we talked about in the beginning. Even if you, as a man, had not been through exactly what your wife has been through, most likely you haven't. Some for some of you, maybe you've both caused betrayal, and maybe it is a little it is a little simpler to get into a place of empathy because you've both been through equally. For a lot of times though, there's one party who has caused the betrayal and one party who's been betrayed. You don't have to have equal parts, equal story because what did Brandon just say?
You're listening, you're reflecting, and you're asking. None of that requires that you've been through what they've been through. People even say this because we did we've done coaching calls on this topic. We have a whole section in our community app on this exact concept because this is huge. This is the momentum of your healing.
Like, the first step is being radically honest, but then you actually know how need to know how to clean up your your mess from being honest, like getting it all out. And so one of the questions that comes up is exactly this. Like, well, I don't actually know what my wife has been through. Like, I I don't know how to have empathy for that. I've never been through that.
And it's like, no, no, no, no, You don't have to have been through. We already gave so many examples. You don't have to have been through it. That actually most of the time leads to people feeling more invalidated. Right?
You don't have to have been through it. You need to show up as an embodied person, full of love and compassion and empathy. Right? The basic description of empathy is your wife is down, your spouse, the betrayed spouse is down in the pit, and you climb down that ladder to the pit to sit with them to see what does it look like down here. What does it feel like down here?
What is your experience? I wanna understand. And Brandon even said, we both said this as an example. Just even as a rule of thumb, when your spouse is bringing something to you, the betrayed spouse, oftentimes a great starter is, of course you feel that way.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: See how different that is? And then correcting facts. Well, I didn't actually sleep with her three times, sweetie. I slept with her two times. No.
Of course you feel that way.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Of course you feel that. Of course you see it that way. Of course you're questioning that. Of course you wanna say that to me. See how different that feel?
And it's not of course, I know I learned this in a podcast. Of course you wanna say that babe. It's You're getting it. You're seeing it. You don't have to have been through it, you don't have to have experienced it to be capable of showing empathy.
You just have to be there full of love and compassion. The goal of the validation flow is to end in connection. It's so that both of you feel seen, heard, and connected. That's the whole goal of marriage. So anything that leaves you feeling disconnected, which would be dismissing, correcting, silence, anger, bitterness, any of those things lead you to disconnect.
Even like Brandon said, we just sit there and take it. Nobody feels connected at the end of that. You want to be able to show up in a way where you both leave feeling, wow. I still feel betrayed. I still feel hurt, and I feel just a smidgy more connected to you.
Brandon: So powerful. If you're a couple that's like, Man, I wanna take this a step further, we do have that event coming up in August fourteenth and fifteenth. It's in San Diego. You can join us in person or online. You can take a look at the tickets below.
If you would like to be there, we'd love to have you and be in the room with you. Or if you need support today or you're listening to sometime in the future, you can join our couples program, with the link below and, maybe my book will be ready by the time you're listening to this. And we look forward to sharing that with you as well. We'll see you next week.